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Hounds 'Sting' Sarnia - AGAIN

The Sarnia Sting had no answer for Nick Cousins Thursday night at the RBC Centre.

Cousins scored his first career hat trick, picked up his 100th career OHL goal, expanded his lead atop the league’s scoring list with four points and led his Soo Greyhounds to a 6-3 victory over Sarnia, vaulting the Soo over the Sting and into sixth place in the Western Conference.

“To get your 100th goal, it’s something special, something I’ll never forget,” said Cousins, who was booed by those remaining in the crowd of 2,646 when he was announced as the game’s first star. “It was a special night for me and an even bigger night for the team.”

It was the second time in eight days the Sting had been pounded by the Hounds after an 8-0 thumping last Wednesday in the Sault, and the third straight home game Sarnia had given up 40 or more shots while recording less than 25 of their own.

Cousins opened the scoring 7:33 into the game, redirecting a Darnell Nurse point shot past Sting netminder J.P. Anderson.

However, Sarnia got it back four minutes later with a point blast from Craig Duininck and headed into the locker room tied 1-1.

From there, it was all Hounds as they outshot the Sting 22-5 in the second period and scored twice more to open the floodgates.

Cousins’s second goal of the night, at 19:32 of the middle stanza, gave the visitors both a 3-1 lead and an emotional lift.

“We outplayed and out-chanced them in the second, but didn’t get a lot of results until that goal,” Cousins said of his late marker. “But that goal gave us momentum.”

“Sarnia has changed a little bit in the way that they’re playing. They played a little more passive and it took some time to adjust to that,” said Soo head coach Sheldon Keefe, whose club improved its record to 32-21-2-2. “After doing it, I thought we carried the play and had the puck a lot.”

Ryan Sproul, Sergey Tolchinsky and Trent Mallette also scored for the Hounds, who won their third in a row and moved a point ahead of the Sting (32-24-0-3) and within five of West Division leading Plymouth (32-16-5-4).

Reid Boucher notched a pair of third-period goals for the Sting, who struggled to find anything good to take away from this game.

“I thought we competed in the third for about 10 minutes,” Beaulieu said.

Boucher’s goals gave him an OHL-leading 53 on the season, five shy of Steven Stamkos’ Sting record of 58.

With 26 goals and 71 assists, Cousins has 97 points on the season, seven better than Sarnia’s Charles Sarault (20-70-90), who had just an assist Thursday.

NOTES:

Mike Dipaolo, Brodie Barrick, Connor Murphy and Taki Pantziris were scratched for the Sting. Mitchell Dempsey, Landon Schiller, Kevin Spinozzi and Mac Clutsam were out of the lineup for the Greyhounds.